Camp Cope on Supporting Other Women in Music and Calling Out Festival Lineups

At the Falls Festival in Australia last year, Camp Cope did something unprecedented. While performing their song “The Opener” in front of an audience, lead singer Georgia “Maq” McDonald changed the lyrics from “It’s another man telling us we can't fill up the room/ It's another man telling us to book a smaller venue” to “It's another man telling us we can't fill up a tent/ It's another f*cking festival booking only nine women." The call-out of the packed festival caused a complete uproar. Plenty of musicians commended Camp Cope for their statement, but the music festival’s response was hardly encouraging, trolls came out on social media, and the members faced an onslaught of sudden press attention.

“I remember being in a bath just crying [afterward]… We were getting inundated with the media asking us everything, even for lineups that we weren’t a part of. I was getting cold calls from radio stations,” Camp Cope bassist Kelly-Dawn “Kelso” Hellmrich tells Teen Vogue. “In those moments when we get really frustrated, and we do, and we get really exhausted, and we do, we try to support each other.”

The group has recently kicked off its first headlining U.S. tour, a large milestone for any band, but especially poignant for the fierce, all-female Melbourne trio. Consisting of Maq, Kelso, and drummer Sarah “Thomo” Thompson, the band is a fearsome unit imbued with punk-rock rage. Even without the lyric swap, “The Opener” serves as an indictment of the music industry’s patronizing misogyny, tokenism, and lowered expectations for nonmale musicians.

Just last year, Pitchforktracked gender balance at music festivals, and found that in 2018, all-women bands comprised only 19 percent of bands playing festivals. That same year, 45 music festivals pledged that by 2022 their lineups would be a balance of male and female acts (which, in its promise, doesn't account for non-binary or gender non-conforming acts in their metrics). Quotas for the sake of "equality" without equal support doesn't necessarily solve the problem: Halsey called out Firefly last year for having few female acts and placing them far down the bill.

“Music is such a way to express that anger and pain so you can get it out there and then move on from it,” Kelso says. “That’s what I love about art in that way. Getting it out has helped me so much that I can move on from it: It’s therapy.”

Camp Cope continues to use their platform to hold the music industry accountable. Their U.S. tour revolves around the March 2018 release of their second album, How to Socialise & Make Friends, which is equal parts triumphant and reflective, incisive and wounded. Despite their anger and frustration, there’s also a sense of victory and catharsis. Yes, they tell us, terrible things have happened to them and they’ve pushed through innumerable adversities, but they’ve made it through, and made it up onstage. After all, if “The Opener” is any indicator, nobody thought Camp Cope would get this far. Just take a look at the lyrics: They’re mostly a collage of disparaging statements made by men who professed disbelief that the women were talented. “The Face of God” is perhaps the most visceral song on the album, succinctly capturing the raw aftershocks of sexual assault. The band’s lyricist, Maq, balances rage with a very real vulnerability.

“We always get extremely anxious right before a song, especially like ‘The Opener’ or ‘The Face of God,’ is released,” Kelso says. “It would be easier, I think, if they were made-up stories, because you’d be like, ‘Oh, if they like them, they do, if they don’t, they don’t.’ But when it’s so honest and true, you’re like, ‘Are they gonna judge me as a person for feeling and thinking this way?’”

Advertisement

But music isn’t the only way they try to make a difference and bring attention to social issues like sexual assault or the gender imbalance in music. In their first year, Kelso and the band started the #ItTakesOne campaign, gathering other musicians to stand against sexual assault at Australian music festivals, where Kelso says “there’s a really bad culture around drinking and abuse.” Earlier this year, Maq posted on Instagram a message of solidarity with Phoebe Bridgers after she came out about Ryan Adams’ alleged abuse in a New York Times piece.

Clearly, the women of Camp Cope have a lot on their minds beyond music. Staying involved in political conversations can be straining, but they also know the power of their work.

“We do get really tired,” Kelso admits. “But things that are important are never easy, so we remind ourselves that. I think if it didn’t take an emotional toll, we wouldn’t be doing it right.”

The support of other women has been paramount for them, as well as the community they’ve built with other bands and musicians across the world. Kelso thinks that community is essential for any woman entering music.

“Find people around you like you who are passionate about the same things, because building that community is going to be the most important thing,” Kelso says. “If your music ability or anything like that is a bit different, really roll with that, and don’t listen to anyone tell you that it’s wrong. I’m happy that all the things that people told us were wrong, we kept and owned it. I think it makes us unique.”